Particular embodiments generally relate to resource demand reduction.
Utility companies and other distribution organizations (referred hereinafter as “utilities”) are responsible for supplying a reliable supply of resources (e.g., electricity, gas, or water) to their customers. One difficulty utilities have is matching the supply of resources to the demand for the resources. The failure to match the provided resources to the demand may result in undesirable consequences.
The utilities may either increase production or reduce demand to match the supply of resources to the demand. The utilities may reduce the demand by powering down or shutting off devices in certain homes. For example, when demand is considered high, a group of devices may be powered down. One problem with this method is that the groups of devices are static because the devices may be manually configured to be shut off as a group. Once the group is manually configured, reconfiguration of the groups of devices may be burdensome. Also, after powering down or shutting off devices, users may turn these devices back on. This lessens the effectiveness of the load reduction if users continually reject the load reduction. In addition, because the groups are static, devices are continually powered down or shut off even though a user may not be complying with the load reduction.